On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 2:29 PM, Vitaliy wrote: > I know that lately it's become fashionable in Europe to sue Americans, > recently there was an American author who was convicted by a British court > en absentia for "libel"[1]. The US constitution protects the author's right > to free speech, and it's highly unlikely that she will ever be extradited to > the UK. Well there's the rub, and it has similarities in this case. In the above case, the author published the work in the UK. In the Google case, one could make the argument that Google published someone else's work in Italy. On the other hand, that would be the same as the book publisher being sued in the UK, rather than the author. So there are some interesting differences as well. Who is at fault - the author that said bad things, or the publisher that printed and distributed the bad things, or both? If I remember the case, both were sued to stop publication (and perhaps with a fine) but I don't recall that this was considered a case where jail time for the libel was an option. Is a libel suit a civil case, or a criminal case? Of course the issue only made the book more popular than it otherwise would have been. But then we rarely hear about libel and slander issues in the US as the first amendment trumps such issues to a large degree, so I have no solid understanding of how that really affects things in the UK. -Adam -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist